Migration in History: Human Migration in Comparative Perspective (review)

The transnational and interdisciplinary nature of the study of migration has been significantly expanded and historicized in recent years. Important attempts to tell a global or world history of the movement of people over time, including Dirk Hoerder's Cultures in Contact and Patrick Manning's Migration in World History (2007), have made important strides towards teasing out both the continuities and the change inherent in human migration. Migration in History: Human Migration in Comparative Perspective, a diverse collection of essays presented at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University during the 2002–2003 academic year, seeks to enter this discussion. As editor Marc S. Rodriguez states in the introduction, "The essays presented here take a longer view of migration, as they examine the role it has played in the shaping of ethnic, religious and civic communities and nations" (p. x). In its examination of migration in both historical and comparative perspectives, this collection takes the first step in integrating the study of migration across space, time and disciplines.

This volume is divided into three sections, each loosely unified under a common theme. Part I examines "the nature of colonization, frontier societies and the contradictions of colonization schemes," (p. x) and is perhaps the most coherent section in the book. Carl Ipsen's essay, "La Più Grande Italia: The Italianization of Argentina" explores the intellectual imagining of the Italian mass emigration at the turn of the 20th century as a positive extension of Italian economy and culture. The "free colonization" of Argentina (as opposed to the military colonization of Ethiopia and Libya), provided an opportunity to strengthen Italy through establishing ties through targeted emigration. Despite all of the intellectual energy that went into imagining an Italy on South American soil, the shift in focus to colonial conquest, as well as the resistance of the Argentinean elite to Italianzación ultimately caused this project to fail.

The two essays in part II examine differing manifestations of community, space and belonging developed through migration. Joshua Fogel's contribution, "Prostitutes and Painters: Early Japanese Migrants to Shanghai," explores two distinct migration streams to Shanghai in the late nineteenth century. While Japanese prostitutes prospered in Shanghai due to the "difference" of the exotic dances and ceremonies they performed, Japanese painters who had been trained in the classical Chinese school, actually ended up contributing to the revival of traditional forms in China. For both groups of migrants, however, Shanghai served as a "cosmopolitan Mecca" in which Japanese migrants could both separate themselves from Japan and prosper as a result of their otherness.

Part III examines the intersection between policy, history and the nature of the nation state, stressing the "political and legal architecture that often defines modern immigration policy and law in relation to the nation as a regulated and organized community" (p. xiv). Luca Einaudi's essay, "Policies and Politics of Immigration Flows in Twentieth-Century Italy and France," examines the relationship between management of migration and economic and demographic transformations in Italy and France. Einaudi compares the effect of migratory policies in France in the early 20th century with similar processes undergone in Italy at the end of the century. In the postwar period France balanced increased need for labor and cycles of economic stagnation with the regulation of post-colonial migratory flows. Italy, which has long been a country of emigration (especially of skilled workers), has only recently begun to manage immigration policy in the face of conservative calls for reform in the face of drastic birth rate decline. This comparative study of historical migration regulation and policy response is a unique approach that highlights the intersection of demography, economy and mobility across borders.

The interdisciplinary and comparative nature of this collection, which includes submissions by economists, anthropologists and historians alike, emphasizes how important the "longer view" is in the study of migration. Unlike the histories of Hoerder and Manning, however, this edited collection lacks...